Latest news with #NorthwesternQatar
Qatar Tribune
6 hours ago
- Science
- Qatar Tribune
NU-Q announces Miriam Gamoran Sherin as the speaker for its 2025 convocation
Tribune News Network Doha Northwestern University in Qatar has announced that Miriam Gamoran Sherin, associate provost for undergraduate education at Northwestern University, will deliver the keynote address at its 2025 convocation ceremony. The ceremony will be held on August 21st, 2025, to welcome the university's 18th incoming class — the Class of 2029 — marking the start of the new academic year. As convocation speaker, Sherin will join Northwestern Qatar dean and CEO Marwan M. Kraidy in addressing the Class of 2029, one of the most accomplished and dynamic incoming cohorts in the school's history. Representing many nationalities, the incoming students bring talents in writing, filmmaking, debating, content creation, and screenwriting. Sherin has served as Northwestern's associate provost for undergraduate education since 2018, where she oversees initiatives to enhance the undergraduate academic experience through close collaboration with schools, Student Affairs, and specialized undergraduate education units. Her leadership emphasizes enriching the educational journey of Northwestern's 8,000 undergraduate students, with a special focus on fostering success for first-generation and low-income students and those from under-resourced schools. A member of the Northwestern faculty since 1997, Sherin is the Alice Gabrielle Twight Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy. Over more than two decades, she has held leadership roles, including Director of Undergraduate Education and Associate Dean for Teacher Education. Her research has advanced understanding of teacher thinking and learning, particularly in the area of 'teacher noticing' — how educators identify and respond to key moments in instruction. She has also pioneered the use of video as a tool for teacher professional development. Sherin earned her B.A. and M.A. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and the University of California, San Diego, respectively, and holds a Ph.D. in Science and Mathematics Education from the University of California, Berkeley. In welcoming Sherin, Dean Kraidy said: 'We are delighted to welcome Miriam to Northwestern Qatar. She embodies the academic excellence and collaborative spirit that connect our campuses in Evanston and Doha, and her dedication to enriching the student experience makes her the perfect voice to welcome the Class of 2029 into our global community.' The annual Convocation is a cherished tradition that follows a week-long orientation program, including the traditional 'March Through the Arch,' during which new students are formally welcomed into the Northwestern community. The ceremony marks both an academic milestone and the beginning of a lifelong connection to the university.
Arab News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Media Majlis: How a museum in Qatar is rethinking media
BEIRUT: When you consider all the ways humans communicate — from memes to smoke signals to shared glances — the task of categorizing them becomes overwhelming. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ To explore how truth is constructed through communication, Alfredo Cramerotti, director of the Media Majlis at Northwestern Qatar, the Middle East's first museum dedicated to media, reflects on the challenges and privileges of leading such an institution. 'Directing the Media Majlis Museum is an immersive commitment … not a job that neatly divides into categories,' Cramerotti told Arab News. Unlike traditional museums that present information and leave visitors to draw their own conclusions, the Media Majlis delves into the mechanics of how truth itself is shaped — and sometimes manipulated. 'We are not adjudicating truth but rather unpacking the means through which truth is constructed, circulated, and challenged,' Cramerotti explained. Truth, as he sees it, is endlessly complex and often travels through unexpected, even mundane, vehicles. One such vehicle? Memes. 'Memes operate as a currency of commentary, at once ephemeral and enduring, local and global,' he said, discussing the museum's upcoming exhibition 'Memememememe,' opening Sept. 1. As Cramerotti points out, the meme's clickability — its blend of humor and urgency — has made it one of today's most powerful tools of communication. It's exactly the kind of cultural artifact worthy of deeper study. 'That kind of recognition, both reflective and disruptive, is what museums should be capable of generating,' he said. While humor certainly infuses much of today's communication, there is also a decisive political backdrop that sets the scene for a media-dedicated museum in the Arab world — namely, the silencing of Arab journalists across the Middle East. 'Rather than speak on behalf of others, we work to create conditions where their words, images, and decisions speak for themselves,' Cramerotti noted.
Qatar Tribune
03-07-2025
- General
- Qatar Tribune
NU-Q to lead expanded engagement at IAMCR 2025 in Singapore
Tribune News Network Doha Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) will play a leading role at the upcoming International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) 2025 conference, set to take place from July 13 to 17 at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, expanding its scholarly presence at one of the world's most prominent gatherings of communication scholars and practitioners. This year's conference theme, 'Communicating Environmental Justice: Many Voices, One Planet', focuses on the need to address environmental crises through inclusive, interdisciplinary communication strategies. It will examine how various narratives can inform global responses to environmental and social challenges. 'IAMCR has always been a space where serious global conversations happen, and it's especially meaningful for us to be part of shaping those conversations with voices from the Global South,' said Marwan M. Kraidy, dean and CEO of Northwestern Qatar. 'I am proud to see our faculty, students, and postdocs sharing bold, timely research that not only reflects our commitment to academic excellence, but also speaks directly to some of the most urgent issues of our time.' Building on last year's strong participation, Northwestern Qatar faculty, researchers, and students will present a broad range of work aligned with the conference's core themes, particularly emphasizing perspectives from the Global South. As part of the university's expanded engagement as a Gold Sponsor, the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South (#IAS_NUQ) will host a booth throughout the event, in which it will showcase its scholarly output and works. Highlights of this year's participation include: Dean Kraidy will chair and serve as discussant for the panel 'Arab Digitalities: Towards an Epistemology of the Digital from the Arab World,' featuring papers by Assistant Professor Heather Jaber and Chafic Najem, global postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern Qatar (#IAS_NUQ). Jaber will also present on ethical consumption and digital culture in a separate panel on sustainable media practices. Harsha Man Maharjan, a global postdoctoral fellow #IAS_NUQ, will contribute two papers: one on digital ID policy in Nepal and another on faith-based resistance to biometric systems in India. Assistant Professor Shehram Mokhtar will explore the role of music in extractive economies in Pakistan's Thar region, and Assistant Professor Scheherazade Safla will examine Black women's podcasting in South Africa. Clovis Bergère, director of #IAS_NUQ, will present on youth protest and performative resistance in Guinea. Bergère will also chair a panel on on dissent and contestation in constrained spaces, in which Nejem will present 'Digital Carceral Mobilities: Mobility and Smuggled Mobile Technologies in Prisons.' Two Northwestern Qatar alums, Annastazia Ng'ambi and Mahnoor Ahmer Ansari, will present their research on journalism in Zambia and gendered time practices on TikTok in Pakistan, respectively. This year's participation at IAMCR builds on Northwestern Qatar's growing presence at leading academic forums around the world, most recently at the 75th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), where faculty, students, and researchers led critical discussions on the Global South. Through its expanded engagement at IAMCR, the university continues to amplify original scholarship from the region.
Qatar Tribune
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Qatar Tribune
NU-Q, ACSS launch new scholarly association for Arab Media Studies
Tribune News Network Doha The Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (IAS NU-Q) and the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) have announced the launch of the Society for Humanistic Arab Media Studies (SHAMS), a pioneering trilingual scholarly association dedicated to advancing rigorous, multidisciplinary, and humanistic research on Arab media in their social, cultural, and political-economic contexts. The new joint initiative, supported in part by Carnegie Corporation of New York, is part of Northwestern Qatar's Arab Information and Media Studies (AIMS) project and builds on the Institute's long-standing partnership with ACSS. It aims to strengthen humanistic research and knowledge production in the Arab region and foster rigorous, interdisciplinary research that enriches the intellectual landscape of Arab media studies by drawing on a wide range of disciplines. This includes literature, history, and philosophy, media studies, digital humanities, and postcolonial theory. 'Working with ACSS has shown us just how powerful trilingualism can be in creating connected, overlapping scholarly publics,' said Marwan M Kraidy, dean and CEO of Northwestern Qatar. 'With SHAMS, we are building on that idea; not just to promote research on Arab media, but to bring together a multilingual network of scholars who have deep expertise about the region. What excites me most is that SHAMS will be a space led by scholars, grounded in the Arab world, and committed to critical thinking from the South about their region. It's exactly the kind of initiative we envisioned when we launched the AIMS project—and I can't wait to see how it grows.' The initiative was launched at the ACSS' seventh conference in Beirut, where the Institute led a scholarly discussion under the conference theme 'Devastation, Imaginaries and Knowledge: Regional Junctures and Global Repercussions'. Faculty and scholars from across the Northwestern University in Qatar community showcased a wide range of scholarly works. This includes an analysis of televised representations of youth in Guinea by Clovis Bergère, director of IAS NU-Q , and three film screenings curated by associate professor Rana Kazkaz and IAS NU-QGlobal Postdoctoral Scholar Chafic Najem. As part of the conference programme, Dean Kraidy chaired a panel on Arab digitalities,exploring how digital technologies are shaping everyday life across the Arab region. The panel brought together research on the intersections of media, politics, and lived experience. Panellists included Najem, who presented 'Buying Time: Regimes of Temporal Capital and the Telecommunication Vortex of Lebanon', Leila Tayeb, assistant professor in residence at Northwestern Qatar, who discussed 'Arab Drones: Being (Targeted) and Listening', and Nermin El Sherif, assistant professor in residence at Utrecht University, who examined 'Controlling 'Live': Internet Trends, Media Panics, and the Social Reproduction of a Silent Nation'. In another session, scholars explored how the 'digital' can be conceptualised and studied within an InterAsia framework. Panellists included Harsha Man Maharjan, a Global Postdoctoral Scholar at IAS NU-Q, who proposed a transregional approach to national ID systems in his presentation, 'An InterAsian Digitalities Framework: A Proposal for National Digital Identification Studies'; Ada Petiwala, assistant professor of Media Studies at the American University of Beirut, who examined how digital narratives of tolerance obscure structural violence in 'India-UAE-Israel: Tolerance/Violence in the New Middle East Order'; and Mariam Karim, also a Global Postdoctoral Scholar at IAS NU-Q, who offered a feminist intervention into digital archival practices in her talk, 'Towards a Feminist Definition of 'InterAsian Digitalities': Nazrah Arabyya'.
